Sins of Our Past

Review by Chi Phan

When I first heard about this game and saw some /screenshots, I said to myself, "finally a really good strategy rpg game that would give Vandal Hearts series a run for it's money." Little did I know just how wrong I was. There's really only one word to describe Hoshigami. Hard. And I do mean hard. One of the most frustrating strategy rpg game that I have ever played. On the surface this game looks promising. Has pretty much everything, a nice storyline, interesting characters, unique magic system, mulitple endings, and good and unique battle system. Too bad despite all that, you don't really enjoy playing this game at all. Let's get into the details of things.

Do you surrender? Will you be my bodyguard?? The world of Hoshigami is made up of one continent, Mardias. On this continent are 3 countries, Nightweld, Gerauld, and Valaimian. The Valaimian Empire has declare war and invaded the country of Nightweld. Nightweld undersiege decided to hire a band of mercernary to their aid. Guess who the mercenaries are?? You, the player, playing as Fazz, the main character. As the mercenary hired by the country of Nightweld, your objective is to defeat the Valaimian Empire and seek help from the neighboring country, Gerauld. During your war campaign and journey you soon learn about the past legends of Madias and the mysterious force that is behind this war. Now the interesting thing about this story is that anything can happen. This is like a choose your own adventure story. Throughout the whole story, you will be given multiple answers to some questions. How you answer these questions determine on whether or not you will gain that person as a member of your party later on and the path you take. I'm not exactly sure how many different endings there are but one can assume there are alot seeing as who remains in your party determine the endings you get. Now the story itself isn't as good simply because it was kind of hard to follow. But then again it may be just me that's having a hard time following it. I can't really say much about the actual ending itself as I didn't get the best ending and the ending I got was quite incomplete and not very satisfying. I give it a strong point for the multiple possibilities but a couple points off for having a story that's a little too confusing to follow at times.

It's over Blackthorn! In terms of characters, Hoshigami provides an abundance of them. That's expected since this is afterall a strategy rpg game. There are over 10 key characters in this game. When I say key characters, I mean supporting casts and characters that are essential to the storyline. The game doesn't developement these key characters as much as I would like. They introduce us to them initially and let us know about them and a little about their past but once they became a member of your party, they become pretty non-existent after that. Which is kind of a let down. The unique thing about these supporting characters is that everyone of them are expendable. In most cases with your typical rpg games, supporting character can't die but only withdraw from battles. Here, everyone can die. Which is very unique and realistic. Good strong characters but needs a little more background developement in them to give them more character. It's really hard to pick a favorite from the bunch.

A 6 hit attack session.. The graphics isn't anything that you haven't seen before if you've played strategy games from the Playstation system. It's on par with all the other strategy rpg games such as Vandal Hearts 2, Saiyuki, FF Tactics, ect. Basically the in game story scene consists of a small 3-D background scenary with small hand drawn sprites in them. The battle maps consists of a 3-D battle map that rotates 360 degree with small sprites in them. Again, if you are familiar with strategy rpg games then you've seen this kind of graphics before. It's the standard strategy rpg graphics that you've seen in other games. You won't be disappointed but you won't be wow either. Nothing more to say about this.

Soon it will all be over.. I really enjoy this game's music. The game doesn't possess an overly abundance of available tunes but what they got will put you in the mood of getting into the strategy of things. I really enjoy one of the tunes. An upbeat happy tune that makes you just want to do a happy dance. Only downside is that there's not one really emotional core tune that will move you. This game overall is pretty much an upbeat tempo. You will definetly enjoy the music, that's for sure.

Did you miss me?? Burn, baby, burn! Game Information    Genre: Strategy Rpg    Company: Atlus    Disc: 1 Disc    Memory: 1 Block    Players: 1 Player Mode    Vibration: Yes    Dual Analog: Yes    Rating: Everyone    Release: November 2001 A long time ago... And there's the gameplay. Hoshigami uses a unique cutting edge game system that hasn't been seen before in a strategy rpg game. Unfortunately the result aren't very good. Let's look into what is most familiar about this game. Like with most strategy rpg game, the game consist of a world map with lines connecting towns and places together. You get a story cut scene followed by a battle map fight. Once you clear a battle map fight, you just follow the line to your next destination and repeat the process over again. Pretty simple right. Now your next destination may also depends on what your answers are to some of the questions in story during the game. This is where the different paths to different endings are involved. Now once you arrive in a town, your menu in the town consists of, Shop (weapons&armour), Coin (magic shop), Temple (where you learn new skills and change elemental spirits), and Recruitment Center. Basic stuff that are similar to most strategy rpg games. So let's move onto the stuff that makes this gameplay unique and hard. The battle system consist of turn base battles on 3D battle maps. You can have up to a maximum of 7 members in a battle map. In the beginning of the game, you start of with just the hero, Fazz and maybe one or 2 key characters. The rest of your party will be made up of grunts that you can recruit in the Recruitment center. Each grunts when you first recruit them will come with a set level. Their levels depends on how far you are into the game, but in most cases their levels are always lower than the level of your current fighters so you will have to level them up when you first recruit them. As you progress further into the game, you will gain more key characters and the use of grunt characters become alot less. Since the game doesn't have any random battles, the only way to level them up is at the Tower of Trials which appears in each chapter. The use of the Tower of Trials is for leveling up characters and getting seals. I'll get into seals later on in the magic system. Now getting back to the battle system. The battle system uses a system called R.A.P. Read for Action Points. Each character has a RAP gauge when his/her turns comes up. Every action a character takes whether it's attack, magic, or move uses a certain number of R.A.P points. Each action requires different R.A.P points. All characters are allowed a certain number of R.A.P points on the R.A.P gauge before his/her turn is up. Now this is where the unique and difficulty part comes in. Now depending on what the character does once his/her turns comes up, it's possible that he/she can do 3 or 4 turns in a row. For example: if an archer doesn't use any R.A.P points to move, he/she can then conserve and use those R.A.P points to attack instead, allowing that fighter to attack 3 times. Let's say a fighter has 10 points on his/her R.A.P gauge to use up. A movement would cost say 4 points and an attack of 3 points. Since the archer isn't moving, he has 4 extra points to spare out of the 10 points in his/her gauge. So the archer can really attack 3 times once his/her turns comes up. This is extremely deadly cause having a fighter whether it's an archer or not attack 3 or more times can spell death to one of your fighters. Especially a vunerable mage. Now this R.A.P system also applies to your fighters as well and they too can attack 3 or more times if they have enough R.A.P points to spare. The problem here is that the enemy will outnumber you, outposition you, outgun you, and probably out level all your characters. The game cheats heavily in favor of the computer. The computer fighters are always pretty much all on the same level as your highest level fighter. If you have one figher that's on Level 10 and the rest of your fighter below level 10. The computer fighters will all have it's fighter on level 10. See what kind of extreme advantage that is? The terrain and positions are always geared toward the computer. The computer will have it's archers and mages so high and unreachable by your fighters but it's archer can reach your guys. And with 3 turns or more, the computer archers can pick off and kill off your fighters in one turn. Lastly the computer will pretty much always have better equipment than your guys. The reason for that is Attack Sessions. Attack Sessions is a unique feature in this game. It's sole purpose is to steal the enemies armour, weapon, magic, or skills. Basically an attack session is where you line up your fighters and throw the enemy from one fighter to the next fighter and so on forth. If you kill off a CPU fighter in an attack session then he/she may drop an equipment, magic, or skills. The Attack Session feature is unique but pretty much useless overall cause inorder to concentrate on an attack session you have to first kill off all but one of the CPU enemies. And in a hard game as this, you hardly want to waste time on hand picking which guy you want to save last during a hard battle to use an attack session on so you can hopefully steal one piece of equipment off of him/her for one of your fighters. So backtracking, the reason why the enemies will pretty much always have better equipment than your fighters is to make the unique Attack Sessions feature relevant. Afterall if they all have the same equipment as you, what's the point of using Attack Sessions. Now lastly to even make matters worse. When your characters die, they die period. In normal rpgs, when a character die, they just go away during that battle and come back in the next battle. But here, whenever a character dies, they die period. This is an extremely frustrating feature in this game. You pretty much literally have to play a perfect game in every battle. Cause if one of your key character dies then that will screw up the good ending you want to get. Now if one of your grunts dies, then you have to go out and spend money recruiting a new grunt then have to level that grunt up. Which is time consuming in itself. So everytime someone dies, you're going to find yourself hitting that reset button. This is probably something that will bother you the most about this game. And to answer your question, "no there are no revival items at all." And the game only provide one revival spell late in chapter 6. Understand how frustrating this game is now? To make matters worse, we going to talk about the unique magic system. The game of Hoshigami uses a magic system called, Coinfeigms. Coinfeigms are basically elemental coins that cast elemental magic. Now here's the tricky and frustrating part but at the sametime, unique and cutting edge. Each coins comes with it's own magic level, with it's own magical strength, range and area attack. At first the coins you get are pretty weak and pathetic. Inorder to increase the power of the magic attack, range, and area of attack, you will need to engrave. Engraving is combining different elemental seals to help boost a coins stats and level. You can buy seals at coin shops or get them after battles in the Tower of Trails. Now you can only level up your coins by engraving. This all sound like fun but it's so hard trying to find the right combination to help boost a coin stats. Very hard. The only way to actually have a success at it is to be hanging out at a help forum dedicated to this game. You should've seen the mass confusion that this magic system causes at a help forum. When I played this game I couldn't even get one good engraving to help boost a coin stats. Thank god for internet access. I swear I don't know how anyone can get by this game without some sort of help on engraving coins from somewhere. And the way this game is set up, the only chance that you can be on equal grounds with the computer is by learning and leveling up your coins at the very beginning of the game. This way you can reduce the number of enemies you have to face to a more manageable number. Thus taking the game from extremely hard to just hard. LOL. One more thing to go. Skills and skills. The skill system is connect to the devotion system. In the world of Hoshigami, you have elemental magic(coins) and elemental skills. Now where do these elemental originate from? Answer: Deities. Deities are elemental spirits in Hoshigami. Magic and skills are deprive from them. Each character comes with a Deity that they are devoted to. Now you can change the elemental spirit that they are devoted to in a temple. But one way or another they are devoted to at least one Deity. When you are devoted to a Deity, you can learn all of that Deity skills. Each skills are useful that can range from attack skills to defense skills. And if you change Deities, you can learn a butt load of useful skills. This is the one unique feature in this game that I enjoy and wasn't frustrated with. Hmm. I've talked about the RAP system, the Devotion system, Attack Sessions, and the battle system. That's about it. The overall gameplay is unique and cutting edge but too unbalance in favor of the CPU making this one of the hardest rpg game that I've ever played. I spent more time being frustrated then actually having fun. And when you're not having fun then that means the gameplay suck. Giving this game a 6 is being kind but it is a unique and cutting edge gameplay and some may find it fun but not me.

It all ends here, Villa. Well this game does provide a few extras. Besides the usually Deities that you get, you can have 2 extra secret Deities that are very good and provide better skills than the regular Deities. There is also a little mini game that is outside of the actually game itself called the House of Sessions. The House of Sessions is a great way to master your attack session skills. There are 50 floors in the House of Sessions so if you got the time then try it out. Lastly on the extras, the game provide you with the 100 floor Tower of Vugtis where you can get get cool weapons, armours, and stuff. If you're really bored and what to spend a couple of weeks climbing this baby then by all mean go for it. So the extra value is there. Now for the replay value. Of course the whole replay value comes from the mulitple endings. Chances are that on your first gameplay, you'll probably won't get the best ending so it's very likely that you will need to replay the game again to get the best ending. I'm not exactly sure how many different endings there are though. Another judgement in the replay is whether or not you really enjoy the gameplay. If you enjoy the game, then the extras and replay value are definetly there. There's no doubt about that. The only complaint is that the extras are quite boring and time consuming to complete. 50 floors House of Sessions and 100 floors of Vugtis Tower? That's a little extreme to me.

Final judgement on this game. This game has the making of a very good strategy rpg game. A story, characters, graphics, music, and extras. The only downside one can actually point to is the difficulty level of this game. I consider myself a hard core rpger and an experience one at that but I find myself very frustrated at playing this game. Thank god, guys like me have internet service and we can seek help from message boards out there. I hate to be the guys who don't have internet service and trying to complete this game all by themselves. This game can be an excellent rpg game but one that takes alot of patience and time to complete. If you don't have alot of patience then you're not going to enjoy this game. Like me. If this game grade was base solely on the gameplay then I would give it a 6 but scoring a game is base on other parts too. So overall this game averages out to an 8. Final Score: 8/10 Time to complete: 60+ hours. Difficulty: Very hard. Favorite character: Alveen Least favorite character: Romleth Most useful Deity: Ema Best fighting class: spell casters Best magic to get: Re Vin (revival spell) Best fighting skill: Seven Pains Best Advice: get those magic spells quickly Also try: FF Tactics or Tactics Ogre Up next: FFX

STORY A good solid story but one that needs just a little bit more detail about the past legends of Mardias.	8
CHARACTERS A strong group of characters but doesn't really provide much more group interaction once the characters join the group.	8
GRAPHICS On par with the other strategy rpg games out there. Nothing spectacular but nothing disappoiting.	8
MUSIC A nice selection of happy upbeat tunes to go war campaigning.	8
GAMEPLAY A cutting edge game system but one that is too unbalance and extremely hard for the casual and core rpgers out there.	6
EXTRAS/REPLAY Good value in terms of extras and replay. Extras are a little too time consuming to complete though.	9